Crown of Shadows (29 page)

“Don‘t,” Karril whispered hoarsely. “Stop.”

Her hand had released his. Her face was white.

He stared at her in amazement, as it hit home just what he had done.
Her life is dependent on my state of mind,
he thought. Awed-and also frightened-by the concept. Must he not only endure the rigors of Tarrant’s Hell, but do so without undue suffering? He didn’t know if he could manage that. Suddenly it hit home just what Karril had risked by coming here. And what depth of friendship there must be between Tarrant and the Iezu-however well-disguised-to inspire such a journey.

A geyser of flame spurted suddenly behind them. They sprinted forward across the black rock, but not fast enough to escape its downpour. Molten drops rained across the landscape, and where they struck Damien, a blinding pain stabbed into him; it took all his strength to keep running even as his flesh burned, the stink of woolen ash mixed with smoking meat as he choked on the fumes of his own destruction. Then one foot came down too hard, or else the ground was especially weak; he felt the rock giving way beneath him and threw himself forward in utter desperation, praying for solid rock ahead of him. In that instant of utter panic he thought he had lost Karril forever, but the demon had chosen his form well; the light, lithe body that so mimicked Rasya’s was still by his side as the rock gave way behind him, freeing a blast of heat so violent that it almost knocked him down.

“This way,” she said. Urging him onward.

Gasping, he struggled to follow her. The soles of his feet felt as if they were on fire; the leather which hardly protected them had begun to smoke, promising even greater pain in the future.
I
was a fool to come here! he despaired. What had he hoped to accomplish?
Tarrant, you’d better be worth this!
Then a fit of coughing overcame him and he staggered forward blindly, guided only by her hand.

“A little late now,” she said dryly. As if he had spoken aloud.

The ground was giving way all around them now, and more and more often they were forced to break into a run despite the risk, to keep themselves from falling with it.
This is Tarrant’s true Hell.
Damien thought,
unbridled fear.
What more fitting torment could there be for such a man, who had made fear into an elixir of immortality, and turned the whole world into his hunting ground? Then another sulfurous cloud enveloped him and he fell to the ground, choking; his hands and back were seared by the hot rock like meat on a grill.

“Come on.” Strong arms were gripping him, fighting to raise him up. “There’s a cool spot ahead, I think.”

Yeah,
he thought dully,
an oasis in Hell. I believe that.
But even that weak fantasy was enough to give him focus, and he struggled to his feet again. The clouds of ash were so thick about them that he could hardly see, but the sound of rock splitting just behind them was warning enough to keep him moving. He followed Karril blindly, clasping her hand in a grip that was sticky with blood, and prayed that the demon’s sight was better than his own.

And then, incredibly, the heat did abate somewhat. The ground felt more solid beneath his feet. (That could have been because the nerves in his feet had been seared to numbness, he told himself, but then again, it could be real.) He took the opportunity to stop and bend over, gasping for breath in the sulfurous air. Since Karril didn’t urge him to keep moving, he assumed that they were safe. For the moment.

When at last burning tears had cleared his eyes of dust, and his shaking muscles had loosened enough to let him stand upright, he looked back at the way they had just come and shuddered. Bright streamers of lava had broken through the ground in so many places that he could hardly trace their path; red fountains of molten rock spewed up like geysers where they had only recently been running. He had been near volcanoes in his life—too near, on occasion—but he had never gone through any realm like this. No living man could, he realized. Only in a place where
life
and
death
were meaningless could man traverse such a hell.

“Please,” he gasped. “Tell me we don’t have to go back that way.”

“No need to worry,” the demon assured him. “Personally, I think the odds are very slim of us going back at all.”

He glared at the demon and opened his mouth to voice a nasty response to his wisecrack, but when he saw what the Rasya-body looked like the words died in his throat. Karril was paler than the real Rasya had ever been, and his (her?) skin was an ashen gray. There was fear in the demon’s eyes now, and exhaustion so human that for a moment Damien thought that it, too, was just part of the masquerade.

My pain is draining him,
he realized. Sickened by
the thought. Can I kill him, just by suffering?

There was a sudden crack beside them; instinctively he grabbed Karril by the arm and jerked her away from it, breaking into a run as soon as he was sure that the demon wouldn’t lose her balance. The seemingly solid rock they had been standing on collapsed into a swirling orange river beneath; a gust of heat slammed into them with hurricane force, flames licking at their backs.

Another island of cool rock beckoned, and they stopped there just long enough for Damien to catch his breath. His muscles ached as though he had been running for days, and his parched throat struggled to draw in enough air to support him. He raised a hand to his forehead to wipe away the sweat that was streaming into his eyes, and to his surprise found that it was whole, unbloodied. Uncooked. Was he healing even as he ran? For a moment it seemed impossible ... and then, with a chill, he recognize the pattern. Yes, his flesh would heal itself, just fast enough to allow it to suffer more. Like the Hunter’s own flesh had done when the enemy trapped him in fire, forcing him to regenerate just fast enough to burn anew. To burn
eternally.

Had those eight days in the rakhlands been so traumatic that they had etched their way into Tarrant’s soul, carving out a niche in his private Hell in which the fire would always burn him? Or did the nightmare already exist within him, and Calesta merely tapped into it when he bound Tarrant within the flames? Either way, it was a terrifying concept. How could a man experience such a thing, and not lose his sanity altogether ?

“Look.” Karril pointed into the distance. “Something’s changing.”

Despite the harsh light—or perhaps because of it—he found it hard to make out anything in that direction. Nevertheless, it seemed to him that there was a difference. After a moment he realized what it was. No lava spurted from the region ahead of them. No clouds of choking ash arose from the landscape. Try as he might, he could see no bright red rivers coursing across the terrain where Karril pointed.

For some reason, that scared him more than everything which had come before. He started to speak, to try to voice his misgiving, but then a gust of noxious gas filled his throat and his nose, setting off a new round of coughing; his stomach heaved as if somehow that could cleanse the delicate membranes. Behind them the rock was giving way again in long, thin sections, bright lava eating away at the shelf they stood upon, inch by inch, whittling down their haven. Soon nothing would be left to stand upon. There was no alternative but to run, and nowhere to run but to that still region up ahead ... and it scared him.

“Vryce?”

“Is that the right way?” he gasped. To his relief Karril nodded. What would he have done if it weren’t? Dived into the lava stream, and swum through the boiling currents to their destination? It didn’t bear thinking about.

They sprinted forward, just in time. With a roar like thunder, the very ground they were standing on shattered like glass and collapsed into the current beneath; fire lapped at their heels as they ran for the refuge which seemed to beckon, just ahead. The whole land was in flux now, and Damien could feel the ground trembling beneath his feet as it buckled in waves, sending red fountains spouting into the air on all sides of them. Molten droplets gouged his flesh as he struggled to keep on his feet. It seemed impossible that he could keep moving, but he did. Somehow.

Finally they came to a place where the ground was still steady, and Damien paused for a brief instant to catch his breath. Ahead of them the black rock had crumbled and fallen, providing a sloping path down to the region beyond. Despite his misgivings, Damien began to scramble down the precarious slope, scoring his flesh on the razor-sharp rocks that lined it. Was there pain ahead? More fear? Anything was better than the glowing rivers and burning rain that were closing in behind them. Wasn’t it?

At the bottom of the slope he paused, and lay back upon the harsh gravel, trying to catch his breath. But his lungs, constricted by cloud-borne poisons, would not relax enough to draw in air. For a moment he debated the relative risk of trying to Heal himself, and at last decided he had nothing to lose by trying. He took hold of the current with his mind and began to weave it, drawing together the wild power into a Workable whole—

Or he tried to. But there was no fae here, or perhaps just no way to Work it.
Earth,
he thought, looking up at the swollen yellow star that shone down on them, recognizing it at last.
Earth was his passion, and also his nightmare.
He remembered the Hunter sharing his dreams of Earth with Damien to make him afraid, and there was no denying their power. Had the Prophet feared the very world he idolized, and mourned the concept of a world without sorcery even as he worked to bring it into being?

“Look,” Karril whispered.

He got to his feet quickly, prepared for some new assault. But the rock beneath his wounded feet was steady, and the air down on this plain was almost breathable. He looked in the distance, following Karril’s own gaze, and saw what looked like the ground moving up ahead. No, not the ground, but something on top of it that shifted and writhed like a living blanket. It was lighter than the ground itself, a sickly yellowish color that might, in a gentler light, have looked like flesh. Human flesh, discolored by the unrelenting sun.

Filled with misgivings, he nonetheless started forward toward it.
If the path leads that way, we have no alternative.
He disciplined his mind by recounting all the various ways he would make Tarrant pay for forcing him to come here, and thus managed to keep his fear under tight rein. But as he drew closer, as he saw the strange realm for what it was, that strategy failed him utterly.

It was bodies. Human bodies, stretching ahead to the horizon and beyond.
Women’s
bodies, strewn across the landscape like discarded refuse, gathered together in such numbers that in places they were stacked in mounds, like heaps of living garbage. As he watched, they twitched and shivered, and their combined motion gave the illusion of waves passing across the surface. He saw thin limbs, pale skin, fingers that clutched at air and then withdrew again, burrowing deep down into the flesh-blanket that seemed to cover the whole planet like crabs seeking shelter.

“What is it?” he whispered.

Karril breathed in sharply, for once without a pat rejoinder. “Damned if I know.”

With a wrenching sensation in his gut he realized that the living blanket was parting, ever so slowly. Limbs contracted to draw the nearer bodies out of their path; their motion was crablike and horrible, not at all human.
What is this place?
he thought desperately. A narrow path was forming, flanked by twitching limbs. It was just wide enough for them to walk single file, if they watched where they were going. Just narrow enough to make him feel sick at the thought of such a passage.

But ...

That was the path, without question; he didn’t need Karril to tell him that. Tarrant’s own fear had marked it for them. How many miles did this horror stretch onward, glazed eyes staring out of undead faces as spider-fingers struggled to clear the way? His stomach churned at the thought that one wrong step might put him in contact with those gruesomely contorted bodies, but a hissing behind him, like steam off approaching lava, warned him that to stay where he was might prove an even worse alternative.

There’s no other choice,
he told himself grimly.
Not unless we want to go back the way we came.
And that was out of the question.

“All right,” he muttered. “Let’s do it.”

He went first, moving toward the narrow path the bodies had made for them. On both sides the mounds of flesh still twitched and writhed, and periodically a leg or a hand would be flung across their path, a gruesome reminder that their new-made road might disappear as quickly as it had begun. The thought made hot bile rise in his throat, but still he forced himself forward.
There’s no other way,
he told himself, repeating the words over and over again, a mantra of endurance. Behind him he could hear the hiss of lava as it flowed down the rocky slope and enveloped the nearest bodies, and the stink of burnt flesh filled the air like a choking perfume. He could see details of the bodies now, faces and breasts and buttocks made waxen and distorted by death, undead eyes gazing out of hollowed sockets as if facing some unseen horror. The movements of their limbs were not random, he could see now, but each body twitched as if running, or striving to run, while the weight of all its neighbors trapped it in place and turned the motion into a mockery of flight.